This disclosure generally relates to providing access to visual phone menus (VPMs) to callers.
Telephone (phone) menus can be used in a company's telephone system to route callers to a desired department, person, or extension within the company during a call. As an example, a customer calling into a company telephone system may wish to reach a specific department, e.g., sales, technical support, or customer service, or a person at an extension. During the call set-up, a conventional phone menu can be played to the customer and can include an audio message containing instructions such as “Select or say ‘1’ for sales; select or say ‘2’ for technical support; select or say ‘3’ for customer service”, etc. When the customer selects a number on a phone keypad or verbalizes the number corresponding to the desired destination, the customer's call is transferred to the selected extension. Phone menus are sometimes referred to as interactive voice response (IVR), auto-attendants, or phone response trees.
Some companies offer visual phone menus that can be viewed by their customers in an internet browser. Generally, the visual phone menu provides a short description of available departments in the company and an associated hyperlink for each department. The customer views the available departments in the browser and selects a desired department that the customer wishes to call. In response to the selection, a call is initiated between the department and the customer. The customer may also enter a contact number for callback, e.g., so that the customer is called back at the provided contact number and thereby connected to the selected department.